“Notice that the name plate slides out,” Shane answered.
“Yes, but they had it printed. It’s not written with pencil,” I told him. “Can I see inside?”
He opened the door and I peeked in. “This is a really old stadium and when they built it, they didn’t need all the employees that work here now,” he explained. “We’re short on space. They keep remodeling and they haven’t gotten to this part of the building yet, but my boss says that they’re hoping for improvements next season.”
I shrugged. “It looks fine to me.” Small and dark (since it didn’t have any windows), but it was the same situation as our office at the restaurant. You didn’t have to squeeze into the room to see that the desk was mostly bare—there were no personal items and nothing that looked like work. “How much time do you even spend in here?”
“Not much, because I’m usually on the road. I’ll be in Iowa this weekend and then I’ll go to Wisconsin. There are a lot of teams to see.” He reached in for the handle and closed the door. “It’s late for lunch. Did you eat?”
“No. I usually have something after we finish our service, so I’m used to late meals.”
“Do you want to go to the cafeteria?”
“Am I allowed?” I wondered.
He shrugged. “Probably not, but we can say that you’re an insider with the Garnets, feeding me secret information. They’ll like to hear that I’m building out my spy network.”
“Football spies?”
“They’re everywhere,” Shane assured me. “They’re probably listening to us right now.”
“There’s more to your job than I thought. Is it another hike to the cafeteria?”
He nodded. “It’s about a five-mile walk so we’ll need to start now because otherwise, we’ll be having dinner.”
I checked my phone. Luckily, we were deeply entombed within the stadium, so I didn’t get enough signal to see if anyone was urgently texting from the restaurant, and I also didn’t have to see if anyone was trying to get in touch to discuss the incident at the frat party. People I had vaguely known from high school or had met in college classes had come out of the woodwork to first commiserate and then try to pump me for information that they could share (and probably laugh about).
“Let’s go,” I told him and we started walking. Before I got winded, I did have something else to say. “Um, thanks.”
“You liked seeing my office?”
“I appreciate that you invited me here and I’m so glad to do something different.”
“You’re welcome,” he said. “Are you still upset about that party thing?”
“You mean, the thing where I embarrassed myself to the point that I hate showing my face outside? Yes, I am.”
He looked at me closely. “You don’t look like you’ve been crying. Not anymore.” He leaned forward and bent down, too. “I thought your eyes were blue but now they look gray. I can’t tell what color they are.”
“It’s too dark in here to see.”
He stood up and somehow, he looked…disappointed? “Yeah, it’s probably the lack of light. Let’s go.”
It felt like more than five miles to the Woodsmen employee lunchroom, but we were mostly quiet along the way. That gave me time to gawk at everything without having to focus on conversation, but it also gave me time to think more about the party and the aftermath, something I’d managed to put out of my mind for at least a few minutes.
Shane had said that people would forget. I wondered when that would occur, because I wanted my memory to be free of it, too. It couldn’t happen soon enough.
Chapter 4
It was never going to end.
I glanced at my sister, who had dragged herself out of her bedroom (my mom had gone in there to prod and wheedle in order to make that happen). Now Morgan looked both disheveled and half-asleep again, but at least she was seated and not prone.
Next, I looked over at my parents. My dad stood with his arms crossed and his face set in a bland expression. You might have thought that his apparent calm was a positive thing, but I knew him better. He could have erupted at any moment.
My mom had her fingers twisted together behind her back and she was trying to smile, but her eyes kept darting around the room: Dad, the door, her purse, Max, the door again, Morgan, back to Dad, over to Max, and then to the window. I thought she might have been looking for an escape route, which wouldn’t have been a bad idea. We’d sat through these before.
“It can’t lose because it’s me. It’s me, I’m the guarantee,” Max said. “I’m the guarantee. It’s me, I’m the guarantee.” He said that a few more times and I thought how it would be a good refrain in a song.
